THEATER REVIEW | 'GREETINGS FROM YORKVILLE'

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Published: October 9, 2007

There is no hardier theme in musical theater than the story of the ing?e trying to break into the cold, cruel world of showbiz. The latest entry in the lists, ''Greetings From Yorkville,'' by Anya Turner and Robert Grusecki, at the SoHo Playhouse, puts a reality-show spin upon this familiar subject. This time it's the autobiographical story of a struggling team of songwriters trying to get a foothold on the big time, performed by the people who wrote and lived it.

Such self-referentiality could be squirm-inducing; here it's not -- or not very often. The story is slender enough: Boy meets girl, girl finds cheap walk-up on the Upper East Side (the Yorkville of the title), boy and girl work various jobs and try to get their songs heard.

But the book (by Ms. Turner) is merely a paste to hold together what amounts to a glorified cabaret evening of songs the team has written over the years, and the songs are quite good. Mr. Grusecki is one of those facile musicians whose fine ear is almost a hindrance, since it allows him to leap deftly from style to style. The sequence ''Showcases'' spotlights a range of formulas, including the requisite Sondheim parody, the sinister tale of a murderous farmer named Greeny Sod. But there are strong original songs as well, like ''Ordinary People,'' or the finale, ''Life is Good.''

Ms. Turner and Mr. Grusecki are genuinely likable. Ms. Turner, a lovely singer with a clear, low voice tinged with a whiskeyish burr, does the heavy lifting, though the show also bogs down in her two emotional evocations of her native Iowa. (The first-act finale, about an ancestor with Indian blood, is a low point.) Mr. Grusecki is her straight man and not a natural performer, but the story still rings true because it is their own.

They are likable enough to have won both a Richard Rodgers Award and a capable production team led by Thommie Walsh, the choreographer and an alumnus of the original ''Chorus Line,'' who directed the show in earlier incarnations before he died in June. (The costume designer, Dona Granata, did come up short in Act I; Ms. Turner is too lovely a woman to have to look as if she feels uncomfortable onstage).

The question is whether the happy ending that this piece cries out for is actually being provided by its current Off Off Broadway incarnation. You hope that it is, at least from the point of view of its creators.

PHOTO: Robert Grusecki and Anya Turner in ''Greetings From Yorkville,'' a musical at the SoHo Playhouse. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER ZIELINSKI)